BACKGROUND While there has been much discussion by policymakers and stakeholders about the effects of "secondary patents" on the pharmaceutical industry, there is no empirical evidence on their prevalence or determinants. Characterizing the landscape of secondary patents is important in light of recent court decisions in the U.S. that may make them more difficult to obtain, and for developing c...

The continuations procedure is intended to benefit “pioneering” inventors, but is allegedly related to the various strategic uses by firms of the U.S. patent system including “submarine patents,” “junk patents,” and patent “thickets.” The procedure is hence the subject of several past and proposed patent policy reforms. Yet, very little is known about how applicants exploit differences in the m...

Automatic and accurate recognition of the parts to be picked is key realize intelligent picking sweet pepper. However, pepper fruits are always covered by other organs, small objects such as stems shoots difficult recognized machines or cameras under certain extreme conditions. To accurately segment recognize all kinds in images captured at night, three experiments were performed this paper, an...

Capital structure determines a company’s growth prospects by affecting its investment activity. The article examines what type of capital, foreign or state-owned, stimulates innovative activity as measured number patent applications. study was carried out using data from 238 public Russian companies in the period 2012–2020. results show that state and investors influence innovation to different...